I was born with a brain that works differently. I knew always, but the things my brain wouldn't do seemed so unimportant and so outweighed by its strengths that it was easy to ignore. I kept this to myself. Until an abrupt menopause when it seemed my brain might be melting. That's when I saw my first neurologist and became obsessed with finding out just how different my brain really was. Turns out my brain's more different than I thought.
For over ten years now I've been working on a memoir about what it is to live in a world not constructed by or for people who are different like me. Serious medical issues intervened and some years I wrote nothing. I have five chapters
that I don't hate. I can't start another chapter until I don't abhor its predecessor
Because I'm both (forgive me) brilliant and retarded, it was easy to ignore to what my doctors call "compensate" for the stuff my brain can't do, like add numbers, find my way from here to there, keep order, spell, get right the rules of grammar, find the ground. I have a blind cane, although I can see, which gives me a sense on unfamiliar or wide open terrain (where I can't touch a wall) like buildings with floor to ceiling windows, atriums, plazas ... . After an abrupt and early menopause I could no longer "find the other way round," which is what I call "compensate," and came out of the closet as a different person, although all my close friends always knew I was different without being able precisely to articulate how.
I always wanted to be a writer, but never thought that was realistic, so became a lawyer and law professor instead. But most of my career I've written, almost always on law, but sometimes, not. I write/edit almost every day but it's hard to imagine finishing. The going's slow-slow.
